Group vs. Team

Till date, I have worked within different teams in different organizations and if I check the number, I would say it must be around 15 teams. But recently, while going through a blog, I came to know the difference between a team and a group. That blog makes me think that whether I have worked with teams, or groups or a combination of team and group. Finally, I tried to concentrate on my current assignment and still searching the answer that whether I am a part of a team or a group.

A GROUP can be defined as any number of members considered as a unit. On the other side, a TEAM is defined as a cooperative unit. This is really a true fact that most of the managers are not clear with the differences between these two terms. And that is the reason they fail to manage a unit which becomes a group due to mismanagement. A best management can transform a unit into a team.

Just going through my past experience, I have worked as a part of team in 80% of my projects. As a team, we worked for the product not for the individual egos. We shared the responsibility of the product and not trying to blame anyone for the bad quality of the product. And in all these teams, management plays a major role to keep the spirit high of the unit so that the unit members can work as a team not as a group. There are n numbers of factors that can map a unit towards a group but if the management is effective and efficient, they can divert their unit for a better team.

One should understand that coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success. So better to go for cooperation, not confrontation.

-- Sanat Sharma